Heart of Darkness

“The dreams of men, the seeds of commonwealths, the germs of empires.”

The narrator provides the audience with the proper context for Marlow’s story. They sit on the Thames, a symbolic representation of Great Britain, from which the naval arm of Britain’s empire set forth. Marlow, too, sets forth from Britain and becomes entangled in a tale of colonialism and empire. The story is reflective, ruminating on how the seeds of commonwealth are sewn and how the germs of empire infect the minds of those involved. The great ambitions of those involved clash with the harsh realities of the unconquered, foreign lands. Juxtaposed against the calm, meditative sunset on the Thames, these tales of Empire appear all the stranger and more Other.

“But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.”

Marlow introduces his audience to the Congo River through a metaphor. He likens the body of water to a snake, loading his imagery with a latent threat. The river is to be feared and avoided, as the audience would avoid a particularly dangerous snake. Marlow cannot help but be fascinated, determined to know where the snake’s tail ends. As dangerous as the river might be, Marlow (as well as the audience and the colonial powers) find themselves compelled to investigate further. 

“It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.”

Marlow’s journey along the coast of Africa is intellectually unfulfilling. A curious man, who once obsessed with the blank spaces on maps, he is forced to watch from the deck of the boat as he sails past towns and ports. He cannot stop anywhere long enough to learn about it, nor can he deduce anything from the glimpses he catches from afar. This sensation—of being so close to a strange world but not investigating it—is like existing in a perpetual nightmare, only adding to the sense of foreboding that builds as Marlow travels closer toward his destination.

“They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.”

Though Marlow is complicit in the horrors of colonialism (he has taken on a job from the colonial overlords of the Congo), he is still horrified by the brutal realities of what is taking place. As he arrives in the Company camp, he discovers a group of laborers who have been worked to death. They are “black shadows of disease” (89), starving men who have no fight or energy left and have simply found a quiet place to die. Like the land itself, they have had their resources extracted in the name of profit and then they are disposed of when they are no longer useful. Marlow is forced to confront the machinations by which he and his country have been able to succeed.

“To make money, of course.”

The white man who accompanies Marlow on the trek through the forest is perpetually sick. He faints constantly and must be carried for large parts of the journey; it is as though his body is rejecting the world around him, proving that he is not built for the environment. The man is willing to endure the pain and the suffering in the name of profit. He tells Marlow as much, thinking it preposterous that anyone would be in the Congo for any other reason than extracting wealth from it.

“A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.”

Having found himself in the Central Station, Marlow begins to consider the nature of the world around him. It is unlike anything he has ever known; it is more horrific and stranger than he had ever imagined. Underpinning everything is the capacity to extract wealth—ivory is everywhere he goes—and Marlow deduces that this kind of “rapacity” is imbecilic. He has seen into the heart of the colonial monster and he is horrified.

“To tear the treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.”

Even though Marlow is perturbed by what he has found in the Company outposts, there always exists another group against which he can contrast himself. The band of explorers arrives in the camp, and their attitudes are so blatantly avaricious that they worry even the Company men. Marlow, who is narrating the story, seems keen to emphasize their lack of morality, to make himself look better by comparison. Though he may have been complicit in terrible deeds, Marlow takes solace in the idea that much worse was taking place in the jungle.

“Anything—anything can be done in this country.”

Marlow overhears the uncle and nephew talking, their inhibitions dropped and their true meaning finally on display. Though they fear Kurtz, they respect him. The crux of their plan rests on the above quote, however. In the jungle, they feel untethered. To maximize their profits and ensure their success, they are willing to do anything: murder, torture, enslave, or whatever it takes. In the jungle, they believe, anything is permitted.

“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.”

Quotes like this help to establish the sense of strangeness and Otherness experienced by Marlow as he travels further up the river and as he draws closer and closer to Kurtz. The world is no longer like the one that he knows, that he has left behind. Marlow’s own prejudices rise to the surface; to him, this world is further back in time, predating civilization. He views the world up the river as a strange and savage land but cannot help but be fascinated by everything he sees.

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.”

The titular heart of darkness carries a double meaning. Explicitly, it refers to the heart of the Congo jungle as Marlow travels up the river. In a symbolic sense, however, it also refers to Kurtz’s own character; as Marlow travels up the river, he begins to understand how Kurtz has been driven to the edge of civilization and how his heart has become darkened by his experiences. Marlow penetrates this darkness in danger of being similarly corrupted and swallowed by the dangers he faces.

“What did it matter what any one knew or ignored.”

In his attempt to plan his meeting with Kurtz, Marlow is struck by the futility of his situation. By this point, the reputation of the man looms so large over Marlow’s thoughts that he knows that nothing he does will measure up to the impression of the man that he has been given throughout his travels. Increasingly, Marlow is beginning to realize how inconsequential he really is in comparison to Kurtz and the jungle.

“It was very curious to see the contrast of the expressions of the white men and of the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred miles away.”

The above quote embodies Marlow’s internal tension between his complicity and his critique of colonialism and racism. He is naturally curious and empathetic toward the local people, but the use of the word “yet” (112) implies that he does not afford them the same privileges as white men. To him, all of Africa is the same, even 800 miles apart. Marlow, who went to great lengths to describe the difference between Belgium and England would not consider a far greater geographical distance to be equivalent when it concerns Africa. While Europeans can be hyper-localized and atomized, Africans are homogenized across the continent.

“The bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze color.”

Marlow’s observation of one of the local people, glimpsed during an arrow attack on the steamboat, demonstrates the way he casually dehumanizes the Africans he encounters. The use of the word “swarming” (119) imbues the attackers with a mindless insect-like quality, while the description of the person reduces them to a collection of breasts and limbs as opposed to an entire, equal human being.

“The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush.”

The image of the crew firing their rifles indiscriminately and ineffectually into the jungle mirrors an earlier scene, in which Marlow observed a French ship firing its cannon into a coastline. Like then, then effect seems impossible to discern. There is no way to tell whether the crew (or the French ship) is hitting anything at all. The action is loud and dramatic but potentially without reward. The effect is a great deal of noise and violence, carried out without thought. In this respect, both images mirror the wider practice of imperialism.

“We are too late, he has vanished.”

After the attack on the steamboat and the death of the helmsman, Marlow is gripped by a sudden despondency. Though his grief is broader than simply confronting Kurtz, he realizes that the man has become an obsession. He is desperate to talk to the man who has had such a profound impact on the country and the Company; Kurtz (or, at least, the reputation of Kurtz) is so markedly different to everything that Marlow has encountered thus far that not being able to talk to the man would represent a failure on Marlow’s part.

“All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.”

Marlow, in justifying his obsession with Kurtz, explains that Kurtz is the embodiment of untethered European colonialism. Though the details of Kurtz’s biography suggest that he is a product of many European countries, it is a symbolic comment. Kurtz is the most successful Company man and to succeed he has completely abandoned any idea of morality. Colonial success, the novel implies, cannot be achieved in a moral fashion. 

“Exterminate all the brutes!”

The report written by Kurtz, Marlow says, was eloquent and well-written but appears utterly unhinged. It provides an insight into how and why Kurtz has disappeared into the jungle; he believes that the advances of the Europeans mean that they appear as (and should take on the mantle of) supernatural beings when colonizing Africa. The above quote, written later, shows the violent subtext of this belief: Kurtz wants to exterminate the “lesser” races, viewing the colonized peoples as subjects not worthy of life.

“He came to them with thunder and lightning, you know—and they had never seen anything like it—and very terrible.”

Kurtz has assumed control of a group of locals, using them to acquire ivory by violent means (rather than trading). His means of taking control of the group is to play of his theory of the white man’s appearance as supernatural beings. The thunder and lightning Kurtz offers are his technology, his ideas, and his charisma. Armed with these weapons, he has made the jungle his own. 

“It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”

Examining Kurtz’s station, Marlow begins to understand him. The jungle has provided Kurtz with the opportunity to indulge every violent whim that has ever occurred to him and provided him with a canvas on which he can explore his ideas of racial hierarchy without restraint. Away from the gaze of society, he has killed, tortured, and desecrated, but the steady supply of large quantities of ivory have—until now—allowed him to get away with everything.

“She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her.”

Kurtz’s mistress is one of the few female characters in the novel. She never speaks but is glimpsed from a distance, adorned in jewelry and ivory. Rather than a real character, she functions more as a physical embodiment of Kurtz’s temptations. Out in the jungle, he is free to rob and kill. Morals—such as the social bonds tying Kurtz to his wife—are abandoned. That the woman is draped in finery (including ivory) symbolizes the way Kurtz has decorated his willful moral abandon in aesthetic plunder. It is not the ivory or the riches themselves that appeals to Kurtz, but the freedom that they represent.

“He had kicked himself loose of the earth.”

In the darkness, Marlow can see the truth about Kurtz at last. He realizes that Kurtz has become untethered through sheer force of will; he has broken free of the earth and the moralities of civilization. Kurtz has done this to himself, only to be brought down by illness and circumstance. Marlow, facing off against Kurtz, sees the hollow soul at the heart of the man who has become his obsession.

“The horror! The horror!”

The novel’s most famous quote, Kurtz’s words are purposefully vague and multilayered. So close to death, Kurtz may be either caught in a nightmarish trance about what he has seen and done in the jungle, or he may be horrified that his actions will be misinterpreted. In his final moments, Kurtz can only espouse fear and dread; though he thought himself free, the pain and the suffering caught up with him eventually, adding a sense of despondency and terror to the end of his hollow life.

“That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last.”

Despite the horrors that Marlow has seen Kurtz inflict, despite the disgust he has for the man’s actions, he finds himself unable to divest himself entirely from Kurtz. When back in Europe, Marlow finds everyone to by hypocritical and dishonest about the realities of colonialism. At least Kurtz, for all his crimes, was honest. Unable to deal with the Europeans’ hypocrisy and yet unable to make the final step that took Kurtz over the edge, Marlow finds himself caught in a futile position of self-loathing and despair.